Teaching your pre-schooler to write

Published 1st November 2016

After getting to grips with their ABCs your pre-schooler can start to learn the basics of writing, and you can help to encourage the development of these skills in your child with these tips and fun activities.

Surround your child with words – One of the keys to beginning writing is helping your child to understand what words are, why they are important and that they all have a meaning. Immerse your child in a world of words by reading to them as much as possible and pointing out words in everyday environments, such as on packaging, sign posts or shop fronts.

Familiarising themselves with the alphabet – As part of being able to recite the alphabet your child will start recognising the shape of these letters, and it’s this knowledge that they’ll need in order to start writing their first letters down on paper.

Start with fingers – Learning to write doesn’t have to involve pencils or crayons just yet – just holding one of these is a motor skill in itself. Why not start with the tools that they were given; their hands and fingers. There’s a whole host of activities that you can do to help your child build up the muscle strength and learn to draw the shapes of letters.

For instance, you can cover a tray with shaving foam, sand or paint and show your child using your pointing finger how to draw different letters before having them copy you. Guide them as you demonstrate with clear verbal instructions, which they can repeat when they have a go.

Or, you can use modelling clay to form the different parts of letters – uppercase letters are often best to start with as they are much easier to distinguish. These activities help your child get used to the shapes and the different strokes required to build all the letters.

Separate letters into straight, curved, diagonal –Some letters are easier than others to write, so start with these first. Encourage your child to attempt letters which have straight lines first, such as L, E, F, before moving on to curves (C, G, O) and then those which feature diagonals (Z, X, N) and teach your child to start and finish in the right places.

Learning to hold a pen – Thin pencils can be quite tricky for little hands to hold, so perhaps start off with chunky crayons or use rubber sleeves over pencils to make them thicker. How they hold their writing implement at this stage isn’t important as long as they can comfortably start to make some shapes.

Moving on to words; start with their name – When it comes to writing full words, start with those which are most common to them, such as their own name, or those of family members before moving on to others. The next steps would be to write labels for items to sell when playing ‘shops’, or writing words to describe what they’ve built with building blocks like ‘my big car’.

Practice makes perfect – Learning to write takes time, patience and plenty of encouragement. It’s also a really nice bonding activity for you to show your child the way on, and you’ll be beaming with pride when your child shows signs of development.